• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Germany, Georgia / 2025 / 186min
Director：Alexandre KOBERIDZE

In the countryside of Georgia, Irakli searches for signs of his daughter Lisa who has suddenly vanished. Accompanying him on this journey is Lisa’s friend Levani, who for reasons unknown is invisible. Wandering the region seeking leads, they encounter all kinds of landscapes and strangers.

A sports photographer named Lisa vanishes. Levani—her work buddy, whose voice we can hear but is otherwise invisible—joins Lisa’s father to track her down, visiting soccer fields in remote regions of Georgia she had last been covering. Despite an overwhelming mood of worry, their journey is at times meditative, gleaning fragments of voices and landscapes from the people they encounter along the way. The third feature film by Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze, who gained international recognition with “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” What makes the film truly distinctive is the fact that it was entirely shot using the camera on an early 2010s cellphone. This lo-fi aesthetic throws into relief profound and beautiful rural scenes, clouding the border between past and present, and inviting us into a world in which reality and magical realism coexist. A deeply personal quest that expands into a reflection on national memory and its transformation, this is one of the year’s boldest and most original films. It premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, where it received Special Mention.

Director’s statement

In the late 1950s, Brazilian footballer Didi introduced a technique for kicking the ball called the “dry leaf.” Just as a dry leaf falls from a tree and it’s impossible for the human eye to calculate where it will land,with this technique it’s impossible for the goalkeeper to predict the exact trajectory of the ball. The thing is, it remains a mystery for the shooter as well.

Try to remember a leaf falling from above — how it changes direction and speed, sometimes dropping fast and straight to the ground, only for everything to shift suddenly. It begins to hover slowly and calmly before changing its path again, and so on, depending on the height, the wind, the humidity, and countless other factors we're not even aware of. Even when it reaches the ground, the leaf's journey isn't over — a gust of wind or a little boy on his way to school might carry it to a different neighborhood, or someone might sweep it into a bag with thousands of other leaves and send it to a place where leaves are burned.

But just like Didi's ball, once it starts to fall, nobody knows where it will go — and so it is with our protagonists. They have a goal but no precise idea of how to reach it, so they let the circumstances guide them. And so it was with us, the few people who made this film: we let ourselves fall and trusted the winds to take us somewhere we couldn’t imagine. This fall continues, and there’s no way back.